Mordecai mao keep a smile from his face as the teen gred down at him. She was adorable, which Kazue agreed with enthusiastically, but he retty certain she wasn’t likely to appreciate that as a pliment. “They are gifts, you should keep them on for the rest of the trip.” Fuyuko’s look was skeptical as he tinued, “The pixies are the way they are because of Li’s influehey were inally part of the puzzle but weren’t much more than that. But Kazue’s preferences and as caused all our inhabitants to awaken to sapience, and when Li arrived they began to ge. Some of our flower faeries are now mushroom faeries, and a few have bee shadow faeries or otherwise ged and evolved outside of our normal trol. And Li has spent many, many hours having long versations and sing stories with the fairies.”

  He gestured at a pair of pixies who were arguing over whose turn it was to be a blue rose and who was supposed to be a red rose, “And they are going to be ever so eager to ‘help’ you solve the puzzle. And remember, you have to vince all the correct faeries to be in flower form at the same time.” It wasn’t quite as hard as it souhe evolution of the faeries had made it so the real challenge of the puzzle was getting the right number of faeries to coordinate being flowers that were close enough to the intended flowers. But he wasn’t going to tell her that part, no one else got that clue.

  Fuyuko sighed, then shook her head and smiled, “I guess it is sort of like some of the stories told about Him.” She then turned her attention to start w out exactly how this puzzle was supposed to work. The arguing pixies gave a clue about how the faeries are the flowers, but finding the proper match by getting them to transform long enough to examihem, and therack of whie was which, aing five of them to be their proper flower in the proper location at the same time was much trickier.

  While Fuyuko worked on coaxing the pixies into a sembnce of order, Mordecai took the opportunity to discuss an idea with his wives, and then they brought Bellona in ohoughts to make sure she would be okay with her role.

  Ohe luponi girl had pleted the puzzle, collected her prizes in the form of small shiny gifts from the pixies, and the door opened, Mordecai got her attention, “We’ve been talking about the tractor idea and have decided that, pending the results of the spar and a few more days of getting to know each other, we will probably offer you the tract. However, we have a couple of stiputions, because of ye. My wives and I would act as yuardians or foster parents, depending on how you want to look at it, until you are eighteen, and Bellona could a our behalf much like an older sister or aunt. While you are our ward, we would expect a reasonable amount of obedieo our decisiarding your personal life. Taking you on as our tractor is also taking in a teen child, and this feels like a proper bance of the increased responsibility, partly because it enables us to act upon the responsibility better.”

  He smiled slightly at her dubious expression, “I know, that sounded rather formal, but sometimes that is needed so that everyone is clear oent. We like what we know of you, and the others are trusting in my judgment of trusting Li and Gil's opinions, who both seem to like you, so we’re pretty sure we’re patible. It just feels better to be officially taking care of you as our ward for a few years, rather than have you as just a standard tractor.”

  “Yer a bit short ta py the part of my daddy, don’t ya think?” Fuyuko retorted. He retty certain that she was defleg to give herself some emotional spad time to think, which was fine, but he decided to py with her as well.

  “Well, if that’s your , allow me to alleviate it,” he said as he began shifting into his ambassador form and growing taller until he topped even Gil. He grinned down at her, “What do you think? This is one of my specific alternate forms.”

  The girl’s expression became such a mix of different feelings that her face became effectively unreadable. Mordecai wasn’t certain what he’d just triggered, but he decided his best course of a was to rex into a slight smile and just atiently for her to start w through whatever was going on.

  Fuyuko’s mind was such a whirl that she couldn’t think coherently at first. It wasn’t just the height, it was also the horns and the offer to act as her guardian by someone who was trusted by and friends with her god. She wasn’t even sure what she really wanted when she asked in a near whisper, “Yer horn, I touch it?”

  She watched as he k and lowered his head to make his horn more reachable. Her fiouched it hesitantly at first, feeling along the surface. It wasly like an Oni's horn; it was too sharp and almost crystalline in its smoothness. But it was about the right size and shape for a one-horn to have. “Not Oni,” she ented as her thoughts drifted uainly.

  “No, or at least, irely. I bined a lot of different traits in this avatar, and there are some oni aspects to my body.” His voi this form was a little deeper, but he eaking softly now, creating a f rumble.

  Fuyuko hadn’t realized how much she’d been hurting, having no one near her who shared this promirait. Even with the friends she could only vaguely remember from the sanctuary, there was a sense of distance, of being different. This was the first time she’d been able to experiehis touch of familiarity in years. “How?” She asked, not certain what she eve by the question.

  “I’ve lived many lives in many different forms, some of those lives have been as Oni. This isn’t superficial shape ging, this is as mu aspee as fox forms are for kitsune.”

  Oh. The full weight of that missing feeling of e came crashing into her, and her body started trembling as her vision began to blur. She saw his head raise and his arms spread, and she threw herself into that embrace as she began sobbing. Warm, strong arms encircled her and held her close, just tight enough to fort.

  Time lost meaning as she cried, losing herself in the flood of emotions. She khat she had been loved at the sanctuary, but having someone more like her, right here in front of her, was different somehow. But eventually, she began tain trol and pulled back slowly while sniffling. Mordecai handed her some soft cloth that he seemed to pull out of nowhere, and she started ing up her face while very carefully not looking at the wet area of his shirt, “Um, sorry about that,” Fuyuko mao mutter in her embarrassment.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he replied, and a bit of magiced over his clothes, ing and drying them, “Are you feelier now?”

  “Ya, I think so.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Did she? Fuyuko wasn’t certain, and thought about it while she finished calming down. After a while, she shrugged, “I guess. It’s just, I haven’t had a ce ta be around many people with horns too, ya know? Not since my parents died. I didn’t realize how much that meant ta me. And it all hit at once. Er,” she coughed unfortable, “could we not tell Gil? It’s embarrassing enough as it is.”

  Mordecai smiled and nodded, “We do that. Do you wao stay like this for the rest of your delve?”

  “Um, yeah, I guess that might be nice. Ya don’t mind?”

  “Not at all. And it’s not a bad idea for me to practiyway, it’s good to be used to walking around casually like this. I’ve only really used this form for spars.”

  The way he said that prompted a question from her, “Just how many forms do ya have?”

  He grinned in respohree primary ohat I am willing to admit to. Plus the ability to blend on the fly, but that takes more deliberation than taking on a form I’ve developed.”

  So at least one more ‘primary’ form that he was teasing the existence of, but also kind of endless forms. Fuyuko felt amusement bubbling up inside of her, “You’re sorta weird, but I think I like it. Makes me the normal one around here, and I kinda like that ge.”

  Mordecai ruffled her hair, which hadn’t happened while she was standing in a long time, and it made her weirdly happy. But she didn’t feel like admitting that right now and rolled her eyes at him before moving on to check out the puzzle room. It couldn’t be worse than dealing with the faeries, right?

  Well, she artly right. The puzzle itself didn’t involve the faeries, she had to figure out this water el traption to make the correct flowers bloom instead, but doing that without actally drawing water away and causing flowers to wilt was hard enough on its own. Doing it with pixies flitting about and advice about which levers to pull made it much harder to stay focused. At least some of them were distracted by his current form, as they were busy decorating his horns and wings instead of decorating her.

  The idea of living here was growing ohe pixies were only a little annoying but harmless and kind of cute, and the bunny people seemed friendly. If the trioing to be her guardians, she’d have to put up with more rules than she did at the sanctuary, but given how the faeries were ag, it didn’t seem like they made a lot of random rules without reason. It would be a crazy pce to call home, but that doesn’t mean it would be a bad pce to call home.

  Yeah, it could be fun, but that art of what made it scary too. Of course, was there such a thing as a good advehat wasn’t at least a little bit scary at times?

  Zagaroth